My Reinvention personal project is about women who reinvent themselves midlife. Becoming a photographer in my 30s completely changed my life for the better…and I want to encourage people to never feel it’s never too late…we’re only going around once!

I met Nicole through makeup and photography – we needed a makeup artist for a UConn Women’s Basketball Team shoot we were doing and Mike remembered meeting a makeup artist at pre-school drop off. Years later we’ve done many shoots together. I’m thrilled to congratulate her on her two-book deal under the pen name Addison McKnight with her first thriller, An Imperfect Plan launching May 10th!

Thank you Nicole for posing for me as I see you – tough, dark, and glamorous – cue the ravens and see our interview below.

What did it take for you to reinvent yourself into a novelist? 

The biggest thing was that I got an idea. You can’t write a book without that great idea, and once I had it, I couldn’t stop writing.

How did you get started in makeup? 

I always enjoyed writing and I went to college to study screenwriting. But at the time I found the idea of moving to LA and really making a go of it too overwhelming. I then bounced around in different jobs, writing, proofreading for a PR company and a publisher and then ended up grant writing for a nonprofit. When my kids were young, I got laid off and I took a part-time makeup job just for something fun to do to get out of the house on the weekends. I ended up loving that job and it evolved into a very full-time career, but I always missed writing. So I started my parenting blog, Lady Goo Goo Gaga, and then eventually became a beauty writer for Martha Stewart Weddings and PopSugar Beauty.

You had a very successful blog, Lady Goo Goo Ga Ga…was that just for fun or part of your writing plan?  What made you choose the thriller genre given Lady Goo Goo Ga Ga is more satirical?

The parenting blog began as an outlet for me, as I felt overwhelmed and horrified by my experience as a stay-at-home mother in West Hartford, Connecticut. Although much of what I wrote about I did in a satirical way, making fun of mothers and their kids, and the whole culture of parenting, I did so anonymously because I thought that many would not have the same sense of humor as me.

A major reason why I started the blog at the time was because I always knew I wanted to write a book some day and everything I read about getting a book published said that I would have to have a built-in following in order to get any agent or publisher to give me a chance. Well after a few years I had my built in following, people were reading across the country and at times I had up to one million readers on my most popular posts. After a while, as my kids got older, it became difficult to keep it going. I was heavily immersed in my beauty writing, at the time and I was getting tired of that too. I had been really enjoying the dark and twisty thrillers I binge-watched as well as the thrillers I read voraciously. So when I got this scary idea for a book with a friend of mine, we decided to dive in and try writing fiction.

READ MORE OF OUR INTERVIEW HERE

Back in February Jane and I were down at the NY Mets’ spring training in Port St. Lucie, Florida before the pandemic hit.  Here are some of our faves from the studio photo shoot with the New York Mets. These photos are displayed on the jumbotron at Citi-Field for the batter walk, on SNY via photo montages, and more. Who knew how different sports would look this year. We are thrilled to hear that they will be back playing today after a 5-day hiatus due to COVID. Let’s Go Mets!

My Reinvention personal project is about women who reinvent themselves midlife. Becoming a photographer in my 30s completely changed my life… for the way better…and I wanted to encourage people to never feel it’s never too late…we’re only going around once! I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Melissa Weinstock for around 5 years and have watched her go through a complete transformation from working at lululemon next door to our studio to owning her own fabulous athleisure brand, grace+GRIT. She also handled breast cancer with an incredible level of grace (and grit!). I was so interested to know more about how she handled these two major events while also being a mom of three teens…and what’s next now that she’s come out the other side. Please enjoy our interview below and enjoy some photos from our shoot where she brought her daughter, Sylvie, to model some of her grace+GRIT wear!

Make-up: Nicole Moleti Wardrobe: grace+GRIT.

Tell us how you reinvented yourself.

Right out of college I had a hard-core dream job as a business consultant, and then I shifted to stay-at-home-mom after having my second baby. After baby #3, I started a non-profit with two of my best friends, and when baby #1 went off to college two years ago, I ultimately fulfilled my dream of opening my own store. It wasn’t as seamless as those two sentences, but I can honestly say that it was a lot about being vulnerable and surrounding myself with smart, strong and good people.

I like to move and grow and honestly, I never want to stop. When I didn’t even realize I was itching, I was offered a job by lululemon before they opened in West Hartford Center. The job fell into my lap- literally when I was grocery shopping and met the soon-to-be store manager. (There’s a lesson right there- ALWAYS BE OPEN!) I loved working again- it was the beginning of my reinvention and incredibly refreshing to be pushed out of my comfort zone. The job was so much more than selling stretchy pants and lit a fire within me- I had to set one, five and ten year goals, take initiative to do things I had no idea how to do, and follow the lead of inspiring women twenty years my junior. I fell in love with retail and was literally evaluated on how much yoga I was practicing, so I, of course, fell in love with that too.

Fast forward three years and I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was determined to keep working and made it through two chemo treatments, but my depleted immune system simply couldn’t handle the holiday season in West Hartford’s hottest store. I stopped working but yoga continued to be my saving ‘grace’ and helped me through my biggest battle to date, which I’m happy to say is fully behind me.

Add two more years and I take a magical yoga class with Kim Charboneau, co-owner of The Yoga Shop. Afterwards, we chat over granola, and I confide that I miss working. She asks me, on the spot, to open my own athletic wear boutique inside the West Hartford studio. I was terrified, yet bursting with excitement- that feeling when you know you have to go for it… that’s reinvention, right?

READ MORE OF OUR INTERVIEW HERE

This was a wonderful afternoon spent photographing a Hartford environmental portrait of Dave Albrycht, President and CIO of Newfleet Asset Management for Virtus Investment Partners.  On assignment for Barron’s…the national investment magazine…we shot in the Virtus Investment Partners  downtown headquarters followed by a set-up at a gym and little league field, showing Dave’s involvement with youth sports…followed by a visit to Dave’ home and a gracious tour of his wine cellar…thank you Dave!  It was a pleasure having so much time with Dave…usually we get 5-10 minutes with executives…although that’s about what the actual shoot takes after an hour of lighting set-up.  We used our favorite Profotos for this shot, a tripod for sure, and a tiny bit of post-production to remove the cords from the window shades.  Thank you to Joe for your help!

What a great experience photographing Robin Smith, General Counsel of Lego for Corporate Counsel Magazine…yes, I did have an entire Lego town in my closet as a kid and traveled around Europe by myself at 20 making sure one of my stops was the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark!  Knowing the U.S. headquarters was in my state when I moved to Connecticut was pretty exciting…and that our town of West Hartford’s mayor worked there was even bigger!  So when we got the request to photograph Lego’s head lawyer, General Counsel Robin Smith in a fun, playful way at the headquarters, I was thrilled.  Robin was a complete pleasure to work with…up for throwing Legos, building Legos and giving us a complete tour of headquarters…even the R&D lab where we saw some top secret future Lego sets.  What struck me most was that every cubicle had Lego models on display and that every conference room had a bowl of Legos that meeting attendees were encouraged to build with…during meetings…what a great corporate culture!

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Wonderful meeting the lovely and remarkable Gloria Steinem for a photo shoot for Maclean’s magazine post her recent speaking engagement at Holyoke College.  Definitely the youngest 82 year old we’ve ever met!  I really wanted to show her warmth (thanks Mike for telling stories about your dad!)  I’ve since picked up her latest book, “My Life on the Road”…a great read and highly recommended!  There’s also an interesting documentary on HBO right now…an amazing woman who changed a lot of attitudes.  Both are great for learning more about this amazing woman!

We recently headed out to Hudson Valley to photograph the delightful Karen Hammerness, Director of Educational Research and Evaluation for the Natural History Museum for Money.com.  We did a variety of set-ups depicting Karen in her home, including one with a reminder of the money lessons she’s taught her girls which they chose for their final image.

With football ending soon, I thought is was a great time to show how our client used our images for their 2015/2016 Holy Cross football team advertising campaign that we shot for them last May.  This was a really fun shoot with a bunch of great guys who were up for running, yelling, and flying through the air….great graphic design by Janelle McLaughlin…and great emotion from the players!

We recently did a whirlwind shoot of ESPN’s Hannah Storm for Cosmopolitan.com.  Hannah is the Anchor for ESPN’s Sports Center.  Needing five to seven poses within an hour, we practically ran through ESPN’s Bristol headquarters (after a pre-tour with Dan…thank you!) with light lighting in tow.  The shoot was for Cosmopolitan.com’s “Get That Life” series …it’s definitely worth a read about this inspiring woman.  We were struck by the amount of rejection Hannah received before she got what she wanted…she’s truly a pioneer and it’s an inspiration to everyone trying to follow their dreams, reach their goals, and not give up.  In person, Hannah is extremely warm, down-to-earth, engaging and easy to work with…thank you Hannah to you and your PR team, Chloe, Eliana, and Dan for being up for all of our ideas!

Seven years running we’ve photographed the New York Mets at Spring Training in Port St. Lucie for SportsNet NY, the official television home of the New York Mets.  We are the last stop on “Photo Day”…the players go through the other press photographers up on the field first then come down to our make-shift locker room studio, music and all.  This year art direction was for a more moody, atmospheric look which we needed to create in camera (vs. post) given the large number of final images.  Thanks to SNY’s Julie for a wonderful team effort!  These photos are used by SNY and the Mets for creative montages and commercials, the Jumbotron, and more.

Matt Harvey is back this season and looking great.  We really enjoy this bunch of guys having photographed many of them for years now, from Matt Harvey to Captain David Wright, Curtis Granderson, Daniel Murphy, Travis D’Arnaud, Dillon Gee, Bobby Parnell, Bartolo Colón, and Jon Niese…lots of optimism in the air…let’s go Mets in 2015!!  Click here for more NY Mets photos.

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